Working From Home: And the Real Deal of Publishing Books

Back in the mid-1990s while preparing to graduate from high school, a number of professional career paths were available to me. Where did I want to be in 10 years? Lawyer? Teacher? Salesman? Sitting on a park bench, I conjured every likely option. The only one that didn’t look like a snapshot from hell had me sitting at a semi-cluttered desk, surrounded by reference books… working from home.

(Why I Don’t Maintain a Social Media Platform.)

At the time, I had started to learn my way into cartooning, met a few professional artists, and exchanged correspondence with others (this was just before e-mail became widespread), but mostly I just considered it a hobby instead of a profession. My mental picture changed all of that. I decided I would study graphic design in college while pegging away at night towards the “real” goal.

Except, as I came to realize much later in life, the goal wasn’t to draw comics for a living, it was working from home. Fast forward 20 years. After my cartooning career fizzled away, books seemed like the next best thing―or, at the very least, the one side of publishing still holding its ground against the digital onslaught. So I took a deep breath, and plunged in… Boy, was in for a painful belly flop!

For the record, I am well-aware mine hasn’t been your run-of-the-mill “I have a novel inside me” path, and I’d rather have no foreign objects inside me at all. All I wanted was a viable way to make a living, yes, working from home!

That said, I do wish somebody had shared the nitty-gritty financial reality of being a book author* but, alas, authors and publishers happen to keep sales figures close to their chests. All average Joes and Janes have to work with are glittering seven-figure-advance announcements and bestselling lists, with the occasional breakthrough indy thrown in to fuel the ill-begotten “follow your bliss” hopes of perspective writers. And so, the day has come to open that can of worms―read on!

For the sake of context, let’s say a bestselling book moves 5,000 weekly units nowadays, but demand being so elastic―meaning it’s at the mercy of every external factor you may think of―it’s tough to maintain that sweet spot once you get there. In fact, most books do not. The standard shelf life of any book is short, since new ones come into stores every week. Bestsellers―including literary long-sellers―may not sell so many copies at all times, but they will surely stay on shelves longer and merit reprints. Larger stores and chains will carry more stock and sell more units than indy shops, but titles will also rotate faster, so most returns will drip from big cities to smaller towns all the way down to dollar stores before your beloved creation gets to live on forever…as confetti. The whole cycle will take about three to five years.

Contrary to work-for-hire, which earns a flat-fee rate in most cases, an author deal means the creator gets paid a fixed advance against a percentage from variable future sales (a.k.a. “royalties”) which usually amount to 10% for hardbacks, 8% paperbacks, and 6% mass-market books (those nifty pocket editions you may find at airports and other venues) in the US. Of course, the HC-PB-MM scheme only works for certain authors at bigger publishers. The rest of us only get the one. As you can see, it is quite the gamble and as such, consider that the house will always win―why else would publishers pit unit returns against author royalties?―so always give your contracts a thorough read!

Out of the 10 books I’ve made under such a deal in the past three years, a 500-page, large-print puzzle paperback got into wholesale―yay!―where it sold around 500 copies a week for a few months―that’s 10 times less than a true bestseller! Then it was left to its own devices at the regular vendor circuit where sales dropped steeply to five units a week or less―nay! Though it has sold over 7,000 lifetime units per my latest statement, it is yet to recoup its humble four-figure advance on the back of its 8% royalties, but fairly closer to that than my least-selling adult puzzle title ever will.

Fortunately, with 17,000 lifetime units sold, a 600-page, 125,000-word trivia volume I wrote became my #1 selling title, managing to recoup its advance to make some much-welcome-if-meager royalties―likely a consequence of choosing a lower advance in return for a higher royalty scheme. It now approaches the inexorable end of its print lifecycle, with digital soon taking over as the only purchase option available.

So yes, the book racket is as cutthroat as it gets, but I can’t say I haven’t had the time of my life becoming an author. On top of it all, my books opened up new professional doors I never would have imagined at that fateful park bench―Christian books, children’s storybooks, literary translation!―and the best part is it all happened working from home.

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*Like Arielle Eckstut and David H. Sterry actually did in their seminal The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Workman, 2015).